NYT Tackles Damning Global Warming Emails, But Reveals Own Hypocrisy

A trove of emails back and forth among climatologists stolen from a
server at the University of East Anglia in Britain has caused shock
waves and may even have repercussions against the idea that humans are
making a significant and harmful contribution to global warming. The
emails include some shockingly shoddy science and venomous attacks on
climate-change dissenters by ostensibly objective climate scientists.

But why won't the Times post the raw documents on its site? Revkin's corresponding post on his nytimes.com Dot Earth blog displayed institutional hypocrisy:

The
documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner
of private information and statements that were never intended for the
public eye, so they won't be posted here. But a quick sift of skeptics' Web sites will point anyone to plenty of sources.

This
is the position of the New York Times when given the chance to publish
sensitive information that might hinder the liberal agenda. Of course,
when the choice is between publishing classified information that might
endanger the lives of U.S. troops in the field or intelligence programs
vital to national security, that information is published without
hesitation by the nation's paper of record. But in this case - the
documents were "never intended for the public eye," so the New York
Times will take a pass.

Credit the Times for
putting the story on the front page, but in a way it came too soon (the
emails first became known Thursday afternoon). Revkin was unable to
unearth all the nuggets from the massive file dump. By contrast, the Washington Post story by Juliet Eilperin, which appeared a day later, was more thorough and made perhaps a bigger impact in the Sunday edition.

Eilperin
caught a vital tidbit about the advocates ("scientists" doesn't really
fit, does it?) pressuring peer review journals not to accept work from
climate skeptics, and then, in ultimate chutzpah, denigrating those
same skeptics for not having published in peer-reviewed journals!

Here's what Eilperin found:

In
one e-mail, the center's director, Phil Jones, writes Pennsylvania
State University's Michael E. Mann and questions whether the work of
academics that question the link between human activities and global
warming deserve to make it into the prestigious IPCC report, which
represents the global consensus view on climate science.

"I
can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report," Jones
writes. "Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to
redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

Revkin's story hit the high points, though Revkin also clung to the theme that global warming is man-made and harmful.

Hundreds
of private e-mail messages and documents hacked from a computer server
at a British university are causing a stir among global warming
skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to
overstate the case for a human influence on climate change.

The
e-mail messages, attributed to prominent American and British climate
researchers, include discussions of scientific data and whether it
should be released, exchanges about how best to combat the arguments of
skeptics, and casual comments - in some cases derisive - about
specific people known for their skeptical views. Drafts of scientific
papers and a photo collage that portrays climate skeptics on an ice
floe were also among the hacked data, some of which dates back 13 years.

In
one e-mail exchange, a scientist writes of using a statistical "trick"
in a chart illustrating a recent sharp warming trend. In another, a
scientist refers to climate skeptics as "idiots."

....

Some
of the correspondence portrays the scientists as feeling under siege by
the skeptics' camp and worried that any stray comment or data glitch
could be turned against them.

The evidence pointing to a growing
human contribution to global warming is so widely accepted that the
hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument. However, the
documents will undoubtedly raise questions about the quality of
research on some specific questions and the actions of some scientists.

Revkin
finished with climatologist and global warming skeptic Patrick
Michaels, the target of some venomous emails from global warming
pushers:

He said some messages mused about
discrediting him by challenging the veracity of his doctoral
dissertation at the University of Wisconsin by claiming he knew his
research was wrong. "This shows these are people willing to bend rules
and go after other people's reputations in very serious ways," he said.

- Clay Waters is the director of Times Watch, an MRC project tracking the New York Times.

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